Networking :: wardriving card



Hey all. I have DSL set up on my libretto very snazzily now, but my plan was to use it for wardriving (or warbiking :p) and whilst the Cisco Aironet 350 card works well out of the box, I'm having a problem with it, which is that wpa_supplement doesn't support the driver (airo_cs) for it. (which makes it kinda useless these days).

Now I'm inquiring to know if anyone knows of a card that meets the following requirements, since I am not so good at product searching. This is not a, 'Can someone do the research for me' thread so much as a 'does anyone already know this' kind of thing.

It should
  be pcmcia
  work with dsl without too much hassle
  work with drivers supported by wpa_supplement
  work with kismet (so passive mode should be supported)
  ideally have an antenna, so that I can put a longer one on it.

I can only assume I'm the not the first person who thought of using DSL for wardriving, so I'm hoping that someway has already figured this out.

On the side though, I'm wondering if there's someone to force the Cisco card to use the drivers supported by wpa_supplement in case one of them works. Failing that, is there another wpa app out there that I can try to adapt to DSL?
There's a list of easily-configurable wireless cards in the wiki.
I saw that, but as you might notice, that's only a small part of the requirements I'm look for.

I had actually started looking up the various cards on line, but trying to figure out what chip sets they use and whether or not they will work properly with kismet etc. is pretty tough to find by just Google searches, which is why I am looking for some prior knowledge.

For one thing, do all cards that use Prism2 or ndiswrapper drivers support passive mode?

Also, I had though about a USB wireless device instead, since I could use that with my Mac as well, and they seem to be more likely to have antennas. How much difficulty would you guys reckon it would be to have a dongle working through a PCMCIA to USB adapter card, provided the model of the wireless device has supported drivers. Would the PCMCIA adapter introduce new difficulties? And would it be a lot slower?

I simply don't want to spend more money on the Libretto if I think it's going to be wasted, which is why am I cautious, and looking for someone else who knows more than I do on the subject. I don't want anyone to think this is out of laziness, but the list of 'cards that work' wasn't a good enough starting point for so much specific information.
From what I've seen, only rt2500, zydas 1211B and atheros are good enough drivers, supporting all modes, kismet along with monitor & host ap modes. All need paching for monitor though, but that's easy.

So try to get one with either Ralink 2500 chipset, Zydas 1211B, or an Atheros one.
Ralink and Zydas are good with both usb and pcmcia, but Atheros usb's aren't so good, so go for Atheros pcmcia from the atheros choices.
From what I have gathered, native drivers are mostly the better choice than using ndiswrapper or the like... afaik rt2500 requires ndiswrapper, unless you use no smp.
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